Twenty-Five Years of Successful Application of Constraint Technologies at Siemens

The development of problem solvers for configuration tasks is one of the most successful and mature application areas of artificial intelligence. The provision of tailored products, services, and systems requires efficient engineering and design processes where configurators play a crucial role. For more than 25 years the application of constraint-based methods has proven to be a key technology in order to realize configurators at Siemens. This article summarizes the main aspects and insights we have gained looking back over this period.